


If I Could Turn Back Time

by NotGarfield



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, F/M, GabeNath Reverse Bang, GabeNath Reverse Bang 2020, Rabbbit!Gabriel, Time Travel Shenanigans, alternate timeline character death, conflicted feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-09
Updated: 2020-12-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27977934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotGarfield/pseuds/NotGarfield
Summary: Gabriel and Nathalie obtain the rabbit miraculous and travel into the paths of time as Velveteen and Mayura, with the goal of preventing the chain of events that would lead to Emilie’s death. But on their way to Tibet, they encounter surprising visions of potential futures that leave them questioning what is possible and what they really want.
Relationships: Gabriel Agreste | Papillon | Hawk Moth/Nathalie Sancoeur
Comments: 22
Kudos: 49
Collections: GabeNath Reverse Bang 2020





	If I Could Turn Back Time

**Author's Note:**

> Y'all, I am so excited to finally get to post this! The Reverse Bang was such a fun challenge to take part in, and Hope was the best partner I could have asked for.

Nathalie leaned in to look more closely at the pocket watch in Gabriel’s hand. It was a relatively innocuous artifact: large and round, with a slightly antiquated design, and other than its bright silver finish, free of the tarnish one might expect on an item of some apparent age, completely ordinary-looking. Yet, unassuming as it appeared, it had been a hard-won prize. Though they had managed to get the upper hand in the end, that skater girl had almost been too clever for them. The fight had been so intense that Nathalie still carried some of the bruises Mayura had sustained, but if they could end things today the way Gabriel planned, it was well worth it.

“How do you activate it?” she asked, noting the absence of a chain; it could not be worn like a brooch or a ring.

Gabriel didn’t respond to her question, only continued to fiddle with the watch, opening and closing it with his thumb. Then he experimentally turned the small winding knob on top. Nathalie nodded as the watch began to glow; in a swell of white-blue light, a kwaami in the form of a pure white rabbit materialized in front of Gabriel.

“Who are you?” it asked suspiciously in a feminine voice, tapping one foot in thin air.

“Your miraculous has changed hands, at least for the moment,” Gabriel answered evasively. “What are your transformation phrases?”  
  


The kwaami folded its arms. “Not so fast. It isn’t just anyone who can pick up my miraculous and wield it well. The domain of time is subtler than any of the others.” Gabriel opened his mouth to protest, but the kwaami darted in closer to his face - forcing him to cross his eyes - and talked straight on over top of his objection. “Do you think you can hold thousands upon thousands of timelines in your head? Can you look at every possible consequence of every action you’ll ever consider and still be able to act? Will you be able to look at a whole ruined timeline and pinpoint the one flap of a butterfly’s wing that set it on the road to disaster?”

Nathalie knew the reference, of course, but she couldn’t help thinking that that particular question was a bit too on the nose.

“How many histories’ worth of tragedies can you watch before you despair?” the kwaami went on. “Can you think about every tragedy in your own history and refrain from trying to interfere? Can you” -

“Enough!” Gabriel roared, startling the kwaami backwards. Nathalie knew him well enough to guess that his temper was due to him being rattled by the interrogation, but he gave no further sign of it on his face. “I need this power for one thing and one thing only, and I will not be distracted. Now, as your master, I order you to tell me how to transform.”  
  


The rabbit’s ears drooped. Its face was difficult to read, but - was Nathalie imagining it, or did she see a flash of fear in its expression?

“‘Fluff, clockwise,’ and ‘Fluff, counterclockwise,’” it said sullenly. “I hope for all our sakes that you think about what you’re doing, _master_.” 

Nathalie swallowed. She didn’t dare suggest to Gabriel that Fluff might be right, but the kwaami’s words made their scheme seem far less straightforward than it had sounded half an hour ago. What _would_ the ripple effects be?

If Gabriel was having similar thoughts, he didn’t voice them. “Fluff,” he said shortly, “clockwise.”

Light flashed around him as Fluff vanished into the pocket watch, then faded, leaving him standing in a white vest and coat and pale blue trousers. His hair was out of its usual gelled style, falling into his face in a manner that very much resembled Adrien, and he held an umbrella in his hand. Nathalie looked at it and raised an eyebrow; Gabriel frowned back at her. His conversation with Fluff seemed to have put him out of sorts. She could hardly blame him. “Are you coming?” he asked.

At that, Nathalie remembered her own role in the plan. She pulled the peacock miraculous from her pocket, pinned it to the front of her shirt, and transformed quickly into Mayura. “Ready,” she said. “What should I call you?”

Her employer thought for a moment. “Velveteen.”

Mayura nodded, and watched as Velveteen turned and drew a burning white circle in the air with the tip of his umbrella. This, they had seen far too many times during their struggle to pin down the miraculous’ evasive last holder. As the circle closed, the whole space inside it filled with a bright, swirling ether. 

Velveteen looked over his shoulder at Mayura and beckoned her to follow. She watched him disappear, melting into the whorls of light, and gulped as she stepped closer. Warily, she began to step through, wishing she had something to hold on to as she searched for solid ground with the foot inside the portal. She couldn’t feel anything solid. All of a sudden, she lost her balance and pitched forward, grabbing futilely for purchase at the intangible edges of the circle, and everything went white as she tumbled through.

*****

The first thing she became aware of was the white dome arching high above them, broken by rows of round, slightly fuzzy still images, far too many to count or absorb. The second was Velveteen in front of her. The third was that the background static of emotions, which had, like always, filled her mind as soon as she transformed, was gone, leaving only Velveteen, faint but sharp in her sixth sense. She felt deafened. 

The fourth thing she noticed was that they seemed to be standing on nothing. She could _feel_ solid ground beneath her feet, but when she glanced down it was only empty space, and the curved plane of the burrow far below. Moreover, the globe of portals seemed to shift as she looked - turning to match where she was looking, or maybe she was the one turning in space. Vertigo seized her and she barely stopped herself from reaching out and grasping at Velveteen’s arm for stability. 

He turned back to her. “One of these will take us to Tibet.” 

The particular place and moment in Tibet, that was, when Gabriel and Emilie had found the two jewels that would send their lives on a downward spiral. Mayura could sense his unease at the prospect of revisiting that day, but even without her miraculous, and without the tension in his jaw and shoulders, she could have guessed. After all, though they hadn’t known it at the time, Tibet had been the last time their family was at peace. Well, more or less. Mayura found herself wondering if the result of their scheme would really be the utopia Gabriel hoped for, if they stopped Emilie from getting the peacock, or if something else would happen to shatter them anyway.

She didn’t say so. She looked around at the countless portals, moving slowly, adjusting to the way her vision warped and wheeled around her. “Then let’s start looking.”

*****

The first several portals, which Velveteen could activate with a touch, showed timelines that were obviously far removed from their own. When they saw versions of themselves at all, they were strange versions: Gabriel as a painter in the countryside, in a cluttered studio with windows opening out on fields of wine grapes; Emilie as a Hollywood film star and Gabriel a nobody costumer; Nathalie as a businesswoman in a palatial office, and then a teacher in a _lycee_ classroom, with the Agrestes nowhere to be found in either one. 

Velveteen gave her a curious look at that last, and Mayura shrugged. “I considered being a teacher for some time when I was younger. I decided it wouldn’t suit me.”

“You’ve done well with teaching Adrien,” Velveteen pointed out with a fond look.

The praise warmed her chest, and a small smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “He’s only one boy, and a well-behaved one.” She looked sideways at her own face, which looked nearly as drawn and harried as the face she saw in the mirror after detransforming. 

“Even so,” Velveteen said, “it’s no small thing. I don’t think I’ve ever thanked you properly for taking it on.”

“It was my pleasure,” Mayura said, the smile breaking through, and he smiled back and turned to the next portal.

As time dragged on (or could it really be said to drag in this space outside time, Mayura wondered?), with Velveteen inspecting the portals more and quickly and with more and more obvious impatience, Mayura began to get distracted, looking around at the domed space and the mosaic of colors and images fading into the distance. When Velveteen stopped in one place and lingered, with a look of horror overtaking his face, it took her a long moment to notice; in fact, the sick aura of distress that rolled off of him was what alerted her first. “What is it?” she asked, moving up beside him to get a better view.

He turned when she spoke, eyes widening, and put out a hand to stop her. “No, don’t” - 

She had already seen. On the other side of the portal, Hawkmoth knelt in the middle of a wrecked street, among cement rubble and sparkling glass shards, holding her own body. Not Mayura, just Nathalie, though the peacock brooch was visible on her chest, gleaming dully. As he adjusted his grip on her, her head fell to the side, and Mayura saw blood drying on her lips, dripping in a thin sticky trail from the corner of her mouth and down her cheek.

Ignoring Velveteen’s concerned look, she pushed past him and touched the portal, dragging her fingers across it like she had seen him do, but the cold glassy surface refused to respond; evidently, though he could bring her in, she had no control here. She looked over her shoulder at him. “How did it happen?” she asked.

He met her gaze, then looked past her at the portal. “Nathalie…”

They never called each other by their real names while transformed. Mayura was unsure if he was speaking to her or to the dead - or at least dying - woman in the portal. Either way, his eyes snapped back to hers after a moment, and his brow creased with a frown. “We should move on.”

“Show me,” she pressed. “Please.” She didn’t know why, but she needed to know - was this the heroes’ doing, or had the timer she wore on her chest finally run out?

Velveteen sighed and reached past her, sliding his hand over the image and rewinding it in a blur of color and motion. When he stopped, the view opened onto the same battlefield they had already seen, all crushed cars, crumbling sidewalks, smashed storefront windows. Whatever akuma had done the damage was out of sight for the moment. Instead, four figures filled the frame: the four miraculous holders of Paris. They fought hand-to-hand in a tight square, boxed in by debris, Hawkmoth facing Ladybug and Mayura beside him against Chat Noir. The real Mayura, standing in the burrow, barely had time to take in the scene before her counterpart on the other side of the portal started to cough.

Hawkmoth wheeled round to look at her. For a moment, both the teenaged heroes tried to exploit their opponents’ distraction to land more blows, but when Mayura crumpled to her hands and knees, still unable to stop coughing, it was evident on their faces that they realized something was very wrong. There was blood on the pavement beneath her now, coming from her hands that had landed on broken glass, and from her mouth, spraying in a pink mist with each cough, then coming in gradually larger dark gobs as her coughing grew wetter and harsher. Hawkmoth knelt beside her and pulled her onto his lap, heedless of the blood that smeared his gloves as he frantically, helplessly caressed her face. His lips moved, but whatever he was saying, it was too quiet for the onlookers in the burrow to make out.

Mayura stared. She was struggling to react, to take in the scene, but next to her, Velveteen’s distress was overpowering. With no one else’s emotions to feel - she sensed nothing from the portal; perhaps the magic blocked her powers, or perhaps the people they were watching simply weren’t real enough - his struck her pure and unadulterated, almost visceral, like the sting of vinegar at the back of her throat.

It was over incredibly fast. The portal Mayura went from spasming to limp, and her head lolled back, blood still trickling from the side of her mouth and from a cut on her cheek. It was all down the front of her dress. Her chest stopped rising and falling. The Hawkmoth in the portal let out a howl of pain, which Velveteen echoed in a softer choked sound. 

“I surrender,” Hawkmoth said. “Do whatever you want to me, just please, save her.”

The heroes looked at him in surprise, then glanced at each other. In her place on the other side of the portal, the real Mayura frowned and resisted the urge to look over at her companion. Gabriel Agreste did not surrender. He did not give up on the goals that were important to him. And he certainly did not make himself vulnerable - except, sometimes, with her.

Ladybug knelt and felt at Mayura’s neck and wrists, peered closely at her bloody mouth. Then she delicately plucked the brooch from the front of her dress, exposing Nathalie lying there; Chat Noir gasped in surprise and, perhaps, recognition (and Mayura fleetingly wondered why), but he didn’t move to get in the middle of what was happening. Ladybug felt for Nathalie’s pulse again, for several agonizing seconds, then looked up at Hawkmoth and shook her head.

Hawkmoth sagged, all his anger and disbelief seemingly spent on that one desperate plea. He brushed the lock of hair that hung across her forehead, now sticky with her own blood, gently back into place.

“You loved her, didn’t you?” Ladybug asked. There was a spark of surprise in Hawkmoth’s eyes, and his mouth opened as if to deliver a denial, and he looked down at Nathalie, and back at Ladybug, and swallowed.

“I did. I...never realized.”

Velveteen, who had been watching seemingly paralyzed, lurched forward and touched the portal, freezing the image. He lingered, gazing at the still shapes for a moment longer, before turning back to Mayura, stiffly, every line of his body tense. She noticed that he didn’t quite meet her eyes. The emotions rolling off of him were as powerful as before, but too confused now for Mayura to make sense of readily.

“We need to move on,” he said flatly.

It took a moment for the words to sink in; Mayura was deeply rattled. What timeline was this? By the look of things, very close to their own. She had always anticipated that using the peacock miraculous might send her down the same road as Emilie - indeed, expected that it would - but as for Hawkmoth’s reaction… what had happened to bring _that_ about? She chastened herself for wondering.

“Yes,” she agreed. “We should.”  
  


*****

Unfortunately, the next portal to catch their attention was even stranger. 

They were looking into the atelier from somewhere in the middle of the room. Gabriel’s podium was out of view, and Nathalie sat behind her desk, alive and whole and typing away on her computer like any ordinary day. Velveteen’s hand twitched, about to switch the scene to see if this was really the timeline they needed, but he hesitated as the atelier door swung open without a knock.

A little girl ran in. Mayura’s heart jumped at the sight of her, because she had Nathalie’s face - younger, of course, softened by toddler fat, but the features were the same. Jaw, nose, eyes. Her hair, though, which hung down to the middle of her back with a bright red bow in it, was the same pale blonde that Gabriel’s had been before he started to go gray.

“Alodie,” the portal Nathalie sighed, leaning over her desk with a fond but exasperated smile. “Isn’t your brother supposed to be watching you?”

The girl, Alodie, ignored the question, and ran around the desk to climb into Nathalie’s lap. “Mama, when is my red going to grow in?” she asked.

“What?”

“My red,” Alodie repeated, and reached up to touch the red streak at Nathalie’s temple. “When will I have it?”

Nathalie laughed. “Oh. Mine doesn’t grow like that, sweetie. I dye it that color.”

Alodie scrunched up her face, apparently considering this. “Can I do mine too, then?”

“Absolutely not,” Nathalie said.

There was a chuckle from somewhere out of view. “Why not, _ma cherie?_ We can find a temporary dye that isn’t too harsh.” Gabriel appeared in the image as though he had stepped out from behind his podium and crossed the room to stand behind Nathalie, resting a hand on her shoulder.

“Isn’t she a little young for that?” Nathalie protested, looking up at him. 

“Oh, let her have her fun,” Gabriel said with a smile. “She wants to look like her mother, and really, who wouldn’t?” He bent down and kissed the top of Nathalie’s head. Mayura realized that she was staring in fascination, and felt herself flush slightly, praying that Velveteen hadn’t noticed the way the scene had captivated her. 

Approaching footsteps became audible from the hall, and a moment later Adrien’s voice came from outside the door. “Alodie, are you in here?”

Alodie’s eyes went wide, and she squeaked and wriggled off of Nathalie’s lap, disappearing under the desk.

Adrien poked his head around the door, looking toward the podium first and then around at Nathalie and Gabriel. Nathalie pointed down at the desk, then put a finger to her lips, smiling. Adrien smiled back. “Well,” he said exaggeratedly, “I guess she’s not here. She’s awfully good at hide and seek. I’ll have to keep looking.” 

There was a muffled giggle from under the desk. 

Velveteen’s hand slammed against the glassy surface, and the image flickered and froze. Mayura turned her head away. Her heart was beating far too quickly given that they were standing still. She felt the desperate urge to say something, anything, to break the tension in the air, but she didn’t know what would. Laugh it off? No. Say it was absurd? But she knew he didn’t need her to say so. Wonder how it happened? Absolutely not. That was a question for her alone, and she knew it would haunt her long after they left the burrow.

In what sense were these timelines real, anyway?

Was this some whole other world she was looking at, without the complications of their own? Or was it a possibility that might yet be realized in her own future? How _had_ it happened? She shook her head slightly to clear it, feeling ashamed of wondering. As they moved on, she resolved herself not to look too closely at their surroundings.

*****

Many more portals went by, and Mayura had time to calm herself, before something else caught their attention. This portal looked into Hawkmoth’s lair. The domed shape of the room, the patterned light of the rose window falling across the floor, and the luminescent butterflies filling the air were unmistakable, but the figure within, standing in shadows, was not Hawkmoth: it was short and slight and feminine. As Mayura and Velveteen strained to get a better look, she stepped forward into the light, and the sunshine glowed on a familiar pale, pointed face and flowing golden hair.

Emilie wore a silver domino mask that flared at the sides, and a purple dress that fell above the knee, patterned like wings. She rested one hand idly on the top of her cane; the other she lifted, palm up, and a white butterfly fluttered down and rested on it. Emilie’s eyes glinted as she closed her hand around the iridescent insect. A smile tugged at one corner of her mouth, but it didn’t reach her eyes.

“You’ll regret ever slighting me,” she said, and opened her hand. The butterfly, now violet and black, took wing, following the same path Mayura had seen many of Hawkmoth’s akumas take toward the center of the rose window. “If you won’t respect Emilie Agreste, you will learn to respect Alimena.” Her green eyes followed her akuma upward; there was something volatile in her gaze, a sizzling anger just beneath the surface. Mayura flinched. She had only seen such a look on Emilie’s face a few times, but every occasion had been memorable to say the least.

This time, when Velveteen reached out to stop the image, his hand shook. “What is this?” he asked in a voice torn between bewilderment and anger. “It’s impossible. Emilie would never do this.”

Mayura refrained from saying anything. In truth, while it surprised her, she could picture it. Emilie had frequently confided in her about the world of acting, with its clashes of intense personalities, its competition and petty intrigues. She always painted herself in a good light, but it was easy enough to read between the lines: Emilie’s vanity and high-strung nature, which manifested as a charming self-assurance only so long as she was admired by those around her, had helped to breed plenty of resentment between her and her peers in the cinema. Would she go so far as to wield magic against the perpetrators of the small offenses she had so often complained about? It wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility, by any means. 

Velveteen’s shock and disbelief, which had raced through her veins like adrenaline, were giving way to a heaviness in her gut that told her he was second-guessing his outburst. Even so, his next words surprised her.

“Is this the future if I take the peacock miraculous today? Will she just use the butterfly instead?” 

Mayura heard the unspoken question: would they ever go back to being the idyllic family that Gabriel thought they had once been?

She stepped between Velveteen and the portal. “We don’t know everything that led to this point,” she pointed out softly. “It isn’t inevitable that this will happen if we go through with our plan. If anything, now you’re warned. You can talk to her, and stop things from going so far.”

He relaxed as she spoke, shoulders slumping, and when she finished he nodded slowly. “You’re right,” he said. “Thank you, Mayura.”

Mayura wasn’t certain she _was_ right. Whatever the ripple effects of their plan - and neither of them could claim much certainty about that - it would, at best, be wallpapering over whatever it was that had driven Emilie to the miraculous in the first place. But she offered Velveteen a smile all the same.

He sighed and turned away from the portal, frozen on the image of Emilie with her hand still outstretched and her eyes smoldering. 

*****

“This is it,” Velveteen said at last.

Mayura had been following after him, two steps behind, and fighting the morbid curiosity that kept pulling her gaze toward the blurry images they passed. She finally allowed herself to look at the one he indicated, finding him already rewinding it. Flashes of color and fragmented images chased one after another: an airplane window, a rocky trail, a braid of golden hair. When Velveteen stopped, the view opened onto a snowy mountainside, broken by what looked like a recent rockfall, and two figures in winter gear.

This had only been a handful of years ago, but Gabriel looked much younger, with hair still mostly blond instead of graying, and fewer lines on his face. Emilie’s appearance was much the same, in details, as the preserved image in the coffin, but she was _alive_ in a way that was almost overwhelming after the fresher impressions of her still, tranquil body. Her cheeks and nose were bright red from the cold, and she chattered away to her husband as they picked their way through the fallen stones, though the distance and the wind stole most of her words.

Mayura dared a glance sideways at Velveteen. The pang in her own chest was echoed through her brooch. He didn’t seem to notice her looking; his eyes were fixed on the scene in front of them. Emilie grabbed her husband’s hand with one of hers, and used the other to point up and out of view and then gesture down to the base of the slope, following the line of the rockslide. Gabriel nodded and said something in reply, smiling warmly.

Velveteen reached out and stopped the image, then turned to Mayura. “We can end it here,” he said, as if he didn’t quite believe it. The air between them hummed. 

“Yes, sir.”

A flicker of a frown crossed Velveteen’s face at that - the use of the honorific while transformed was unusual. But whatever surprise he had shown was quickly washed away by hopeful apprehension. He rewound the image until Emilie and his own younger self vanished from sight.

“Wait here,” he said to Mayura, and stepped through the portal. The instant he crossed over, his emotional signature vanished from her perception, leaving her unsettlingly aware of the absence. She watched him make his way over to the rockslide, footsteps crunching in the snow. It was clear that even after all this time, he remembered exactly where the miraculous had been, because he made a beeline for one particular flat slab of rock that to Mayura’s eyes was entirely indistinguishable from the others around it. He lifted it, reached underneath, and pulled something out. Mayura caught a flash of familiar peacock blue.

She expected him to come back immediately, but he simply straightened and stood still, looking down at the brooch in his hand. He was angled mostly away from her; she couldn’t make out his expression. He turned the brooch over and then over again, reached up with his other hand to trace a finger along its scalloped edge.

A laugh drifted through the air, faint but clear. Velveteen’s head snapped up at the sound of his wife’s voice, but he still didn’t move. Mayura leaned in closer to the portal, shivering at the cold air blowing through it, with the intent to reach through and beckon Velveteen to come back before he was seen, but before she could, he turned swiftly, lifted the rock again, and replaced the brooch where it had come from. The next moment, he was ducking back through the portal and closing it behind him. The circle froze on an image of the empty mountain, snowflakes hanging in midair, and Emilie and Gabriel still out of sight.

Mayura refrained from saying anything until they were nearly back to the portal from which they had come. “You didn’t take it,” she said softly, unable to resist. 

At first, Velveteen neither looked back nor responded. He opened the portal and stepped through into the atelier as if he hadn’t heard, or was simply ignoring the implicit question. Part of Mayura didn’t want the answer anyway, as every possible explanation she could think of was more confusing and dangerous than the last.

“Duusu, fall my feathers,” she said absently, and unpinned the brooch from her sweater, pulling Duusu back into it before she had the opportunity to say anything. As usual, a wave of dizziness rolled over her, making her stomach churn and the floor tilt under her feet, accompanied by an itch in her throat. She swallowed, inhaled deeply through her nose, and focused on a corner of Gabriel’s podium as a fixed point until the moment of vertigo passed. 

Next to her, Gabriel also detransformed. As Nathalie came back to herself, she saw Fluff spring out of the pocket watch and float up in front of Gabriel’s face; it was hard to tell, but she almost thought the kwaami looked pleased - at the very least, less irked than earlier.

“Wise decision,” Fluff said. There was a note of warning in the words, an unspoken _and you had better not change your mind again._

Gabriel looked from Fluff to Nathalie, caught her gaze and held it. His face had an uncharacteristically open look, marked by some emotion more vulnerable than the familiar anger or the occasional wild elation that only served to distance him from her. What he was feeling at this moment, though, Nathalie couldn’t begin to guess. She wondered if he knew himself.

“Yes,” he said pensively. “What we saw…” He looked away from Nathalie, back at Fluff. 

Nathalie swallowed and clasped her hands behind her back to keep them from fidgeting. 

“You were correct,” Gabriel went on after a pause. “The past and the future are… more complicated than I anticipated.”

That was true in more ways than one, as far as Nathalie was concerned. It was not only a matter of causes and effects and the outcomes of actions - that, at least, was comprehensible - but of what was possible and what was wanted.

But those thoughts, she carefully folded up and put away in the part of her mind that it was second nature to ignore in Gabriel’s presence. As Mayura, so open to feeling the emotions of others, it was easy, easier than she liked, to find her own drawn to the surface; when her transformation ended, though, so did that permission.

“We have had setbacks before,” she said. “There will be another way.” Another path to a future they hadn’t seen but persisted in believing in all the same: a future with Emilie in it, and no blonde-haired, round-faced little girl, and no confessions over a bloody body.

Gabriel nodded, still looking away from her. He turned the little winding knob at the top of the watch, and Fluff was pulled back into it, leaving it plain and unremarkable once again.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope's amazing art here: https://thehopeelias.tumblr.com/post/637048862521065472/fic-if-i-could-turn-back


End file.
